1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate generally to a backup cooling system. Specifically, aspects of the invention relate to a modular and scalable backup cooling storage system that may cool a liquid supply when a main liquid chiller of that liquid supply is not operational.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Heat produced by electronic equipment, such as servers and blade servers, can have adverse effects on the performance, reliability and useful life of the electronic equipment. As electronic equipment becomes faster, smaller, and more power consuming, such electronic equipment also produces more heat, making control of heat more critical to reliable operation of the electronic equipment.
A typical environment where heat control may be critical includes a data center containing racks of electronic equipment. As the size of electronic equipment has decreased, the amount of electronic equipment in each rack and heat generated by the electronic equipment in the racks has increased. Furthermore, as demand for processing power has increased, data centers have increased in size so that a typical data center may now contain hundreds of such racks.
An exemplary industry standard rack used to store such electronic equipment is approximately six to six-and-a-half feet high, by about twenty-four inches wide, and about forty inches deep. Such a rack is commonly referred to as a “nineteen inch” rack, as defined by the Electronics Industries Association's EIA-310-D standard.
To address heat-related issues of the electronic equipment stored in these racks, computer room air conditioner (CRAC) units may be disposed in various arrangements within data centers to cool or assist in cooling air supplied to the racks. These CRACs generally intake warm air from one side of the CRAC unit from one direction and output cooled air out of another side of the CRAC unit in another direction. The racks may direct the cooled air using one or more fans to cool the electronic equipment stored in the racks.
In particularly heat-dense data centers, chilled liquids have been supplied to CRAC units for use in generating a cool air supply to the electronic equipment racks. In these liquid-based cooling systems, a main liquid chiller may supply CRAC units in a data center with a flow of a chilled liquid. A piping system may be disposed in the data center to pipe the chilled liquid from the main liquid chiller to the CRAC units for use in cooling the electronic equipment and to pipe warm liquid back from the racks to the main liquid chiller to be cooled again. For example, in some arrangements, liquid may be pumped through overhead piping to the CRAC units. In the CRAC units, the liquid may be used by a heat exchanger to cool air that is then supplied to cool the electronic equipment in the electronic equipment racks.
Because heat dense data centers such as those that typically warrant liquid-based cooling systems may not tolerate cooling loss for extended periods of time, the main liquid chiller of such liquid-based chilling systems generally is connected to backup power generators that may power the main liquid chiller if a main power supply to the main liquid chiller fails. Such backup power supplies may need to produce a relatively large amount of power to supply the main liquid chiller with the power needed to chill the liquid supply.